She tried to turn the doorknob, but it was no use.
“I don’t take any medicine. You are here to rob me,” the older woman claimed in a high-pitched voice.
“She must have miscalculated for her next dose,” Tessa said worriedly. “Confusion and paranoia can be part of ketoacidosis. We have to get in there.”
“Call 911,” Jonas instructed. “Do you have anything small, like a bobby pin?”
“No—wait,” Tessa said, clearly shaken. “I do, here,” she said, shoving something into his hands, dialing her cell phone to call paramedics.
Jonas focused, finding the door lock. He hadn’t done this in a number of years, and he’d never been great at it, but urgency fueled his movements.
He found that not being able to see actually increased his awareness of the mechanism of the lock. Not using his eyes, he could focus instead on the sense of movement or resistance offered by the pins, and almost as soon as Tessa hung up her call, he had the lock open.
“You are amazing,” Tessa said, opening the door, only to find the chain and a chair propped up against it. Kate really did think they were there to rob her.
“Time for a little brute force, huh?” he guessed.
“I think so,” she agreed, and they both put their shoulders to the door and shoved, breaking the chain and pushing the door inward.
“What do you think you’re doing?” a voice bellowed behind them. “I have called 911!”
Tessa turned to see an older woman on the porch holding a broom up in the air as if to swat at them. She calmed as she squinted, focusing in.
“Tessa, is that you?”
“It is me, Betty. I’m so sorry to worry you, we have to get inside to help Kate—she’s out of insulin.”
“Oh, no,” Betty said, dropping the broom and joining them, sizing up Jonas in the process.
“And you are …?” the older woman asked him.
“Friend of Tessa’s.”
“Do you have a name?”
“Jonas, ma’am.”
“Do you knock doors in often?”
“Only for beautiful sounding women,” he said with a smile, and Betty smiled back.
“Emergency is en route, but we have to keep her calm and give her an injection right away, if we can, the 911 operator instructed,” Tessa said.
Jonas nodded. “I can try to hold her still if need be, while you do that.”
“I’ll help keep her calm. She might recognize me,” Betty offered, and came in with them.
Kate was resistant but weak, and still very confused. Jonas felt terrible having to restrain her, even gently, but he spoke quietly in her ear, saying small, nonsensical things until Tessa had administered the shot of insulin. Kate seemed to relax against him moments later.
“She passed out,” Tessa said, sounding panicked just as the sound of the EMT sirens could be heard out on the street.
“The EMTs will take good care of her,” Jonas said just as patiently. “She’ll be fine. You got here in time,” he said to Tessa, putting his hand to her face and feeling hot tears.
He wanted to go to her, to hold her, but he was supporting the unconscious woman and couldn’t move.
“You’re very handsome, you know,” Betty interjected, silencing him and making Tessa laugh as EMTs came in and took over for them.
“I hope she’s going to be okay,” Tessa said, holding Jonas’s hand. “Will you excuse me for a moment? I need to use Kate’s bathroom,” she said to Jonas, and squeezed his hand before she walked away.
Jonas chatted with Betty and a few other neighbors who had come out to see what was going on while the EMTs prepped Kate for transport.
“Tessa is such a special girl,” Betty said. “She’s always so good to Kate, and even brought us homemade soup when my husband was sick last winter. She even cleaned house for me.”
“Really?” Jonas asked.
“You’re blind?” Betty asked curiously.
“Yep.”
“Well, I can tell you that she’s gorgeous, inside and out. I hope you appreciate that,” Betty told him.
“I’m starting to,” he said more to himself than to anyone else.
Jonas thought the older woman might ask about his intentions, next, but was glad when one of the other neighbors engaged Betty in conversation.
He knew Tessa was gorgeous. As for the rest, he was trying to match his earlier assumptions about her with everything else he was learning, and was coming up short. All he had to base his ideas of her on were media reports, her background check and her father’s opinion.
But he had his own opinion, as well.
Could he have been wrong about her motives?
“Hey, what are you doing here, Jon?” Jonas heard a familiar voice ask.
“Brad?” he guessed, not sure he was identifying the voice right.
“Yeah, it’s me, buddy. How are you?”
Brad was a firefighter/EMT that Berringer Security had helped out a while ago. Brad’s sister had been bothered by an old boyfriend, and Chance had helped keep an eye on her and made it clear to the ex that he needed to go away for good.
“I heard you lost your eyesight. Tough break. Job go bad?”
Jonas decided to skip over that, and got to the heart of it, hoping he could use this connection to their advantage.
“Yeah, something like that, but it’s temporary. I think my vision will be back soon,” he said. “Listen, we’re kind of in a bad spot here. I was hoping we could ride along with you. My friend is this woman’s caretaker, and is very concerned, but we don’t have a vehicle.”
“The blonde? She’s your client?”
Jonas could hear the high five in Brad’s tone.
“Yeah. She’s mine,” he said, maybe a little more possessively than he meant to. “I’d appreciate it, though I know it’s not usually allowed.”
“I can make it happen. It would be good for the patient to see someone she knows as she comes out of this, too,” Brad said.
Jonas thanked him and returned to tell Tessa, who hugged him tight, much to the tittering approval of the older women looking on.
“Thank you, Jonas. Thank you so much for your help with Kate,” she said, hugging
